30.Sept.2012

What lower capital gains tax rates buys you

Two things: incentive to make lots more income look like "capital
gains," so that its recipients can enjoy those lower rates; and
a nice leg up for the wealthy who don't much need it. Joe Nocera:
Romney
and the Forbes 400.

"In the last year alone, the cumulative net worth of the wealthiest 400
people, by Forbes’s calculation, rose by $200 billion. That compares
with a 4 percent drop in median household income last year, according to
the Census Bureau."

But, "job creators," right? Don't capital handlers make everyone better
off if they get to keep more capital? We're waiting for that.

"In 1986, when Ronald Reagan was president, the differential between
capital gains and ordinary income was eliminated—and the economy
soared. The capital gains rate was higher during the Bill Clinton years
than in the George W. Bush years, yet the economy did better under
Clinton than under Bush."

Here's someone with a more specific proposal that makes a lot of sense:
the
28 Percent Solution, from Richard Thaler, professor of
economics and behavioral science.

If we could see ourselves as others see us

Happened to have a look at
BBC
Newsnight
today, where they featured a conservative radio commentator I'd never
heard of, Joyce Kaufman on WFTL, after the intro that many of her
audience (and she, from the videobite shown) feel that
"the Democrats are trying to steal Florida with fake voters, and
fraud."

"I hope Floridians understand that this, what happens in Florida can
decide who the next President of the United States is," Senator John
McCain tells her and the WFTL audience. "Absolutely," she affirms on
air. Then to the BBC:

Kaufman: "I have no examples of anybody trying to supress the vote. I
think that people should have to prove who they are before they vote; I
can't cash a check without a driver's license or some kind of federal
ID, but we're allowing people to vote who never furnish proof of their
identity, who can walk into a voters' registration drive like the one in
Miami, and say their name is Tim Tebow and be given a ballot."

BBC: "You are saying that there are some on the American left who are
deliberately getting false names onto the voter registry..."

Kaufman: "Well we know they did it in 2008 and we know they did it in
2010, so my expectation is they'll probably do it again."

You remember Florida, of course, as the state where George W. Bush and
his Republican friends in high places and black robes "decided who the
next President of the United States" would be back in 2000.

And OK, I haven't heard Kaufman's response to the revelations of
the GOP-contracted voter registration fraud going
on in Florida and several other states just this week, but I am
curious what she might have to say on the subject.

Sunday blockbuster: trash to cash

Our county owes a debt of gratitude to the Idaho Statesman and
the non-profit Idaho
Citizens for a Safe Environment (ICSETG) for insisting on details
about the waste-to-energy project that the Ada County Commission
approved, and approved payments for, even as they stonewalled requests
for more information and public participation. The
Idaho Public
Records Act was more forthcoming.

"Dynamis
used county money to buy Macs, pay consultants" was above the fold on
Sunday's front page, with this arresting subhead: Contract allowed up
to $350 an hour; Dynamis billed 1,390 hours at that rate. Except
that the top rate they were paying for engineering was actually 10%
higher for additional "overhead and profit," so make that
$385/hr. And add in a nice wad of additional overhead cash for
the head men: $145,000 to Dynamis CEO C. Lloyd Mahaffey and COO John
Johnston for "design oversight and management."

Nothing quite like billing overhead on overhead plus 10%.

There is no way, no how, any poor schmuck engineer on a government
payroll in our neighborhood is making a third of that kind of
hourly rate. Cynthia Sewell's report includes local comparisons of the
rates we've paid for outside help:

The highest hourly rate [the Ada County Highway District] paid a
contracted civil engineer who worked on the East ParkCenter
bridge—one of the agency’s most expensive projects, built in
2009—was $200 an hour for five hours of work.

"The highest engineering rate I could find on our contracts was $265 per
hour," said Boise city spokesman Adam Park. "This was for a regional
vice president of a major consulting firm. Generally speaking, we pay
managing/senior engineers in the range of $150 to $200 per hour and
project engineers $125 to $160 per hour."

Meridian pays $67 to $240 an hour for professional engineering services.
Both cities said they do not allow contractors a separate markup charge
on labor, materials and other expenses.

The immediate past president of the Idaho Society of Professional
Engineers said that billing rates for licensed civil engineers in our
area run from under $100/hr up to $200/hr for specialists, with "the
typical billing rate two to four times the salary rate," the markup for
overhead built in. In terms of the wages coming down to the engineer,
$50/hr would work out to a comfortable, 6-figure salary. The
company-side rule of thumb is that the "fully loaded" cost of an
employee is twice her salary, so $100/hr should provide for experienced
engineering talent. $200/hr would be plenty for exceptional or
specialized talent.

A long sidebar on the story describing "Where the Money Went," includes
$45k dropped at MacLife for "nine computers and accessories" and $24k for
"GoEngineer engineering software." Having used my share of computers and
engineering software, I can assure you that one does not hit the ground
running with new hardware and software (not even the whizziest thing
from Apple). It takes time to set things up, learn the ropes, and get
past the "overhead" to the point where you can be productive. How much
of the more than 2,000 "engineering" hours, 1,022 "drafting/engineering"
hours and 242 "information technology" hours paid for with public money
was devoted to startup/training costs?

What about the $101,823 to Tulsa Combustion, for engineering services;
$85,000 to Industrial Construction Group, of Portland, for preliminary
design-build contract; $71,605 to Boise lobbyist firm GSA Results,
supposedly for "federal/state regulatory compliance"; $69,460 to
Erstad Architects, of Boise, for construction documents and design
development; $63,188 to Rule Steel, of Caldwell, for design and
technical services; $18,539 to "other engineers and drafters"; and
$10,666 to JBR Environmental Consultants? That's more than
$400,000 of subcontracted work, on top of the $1.1+ million they
billed for their eight employees and CEO.

The story from the Commissioners has been "we don't have to care,"
because the project will be great, and pay for itself, and we don't
need to have a public hearing, "because the garbage-processing facility
is an 'ancillary use' at the already approved landfill," and besides,
the company was supposed to repay the county within six months.

So, it was effectively billing itself for those crazy rates?! Maybe, but
maybe not: "nearly two years later, Dynamis has not repaid the
money."

The Statesman has an accompanying story (in the sidebar of the web
version) by Sewell that casts doubt on our ability to collect, should
pushing come to shoving, as it seems quite likely to do. A Maryland
private equity firm, Potomac Energy Fund, has loaned money to Dynamis
and filed notice with the Idaho Secretary of State that it has
collateral claims on Dynamis' existing projects, as well as

"all fabricated and raw steel Dynamis has housed at Rule Steel
in Caldwell; all Dynamis equipment and inventory 'of every type'; 144
pieces of Burner Control Technology equipment located at Rule Steel; and
all present and future accounts, proceeds and payments" and
"all tax refunds of every kind and nature to which the Debtor now or
hereafter may become entitled."

It sure looks like some folks have turned waste to money—or at
least effected a transfer of quite a bit of cash from Ada County
taxpayers' pocket to theirs.

28.Sept.2012

Chronic fatigue

I heard a soundbite from a Romney campaign speech this week, something
about "tired of being tired," and I was thinking take a nap, man.
When I went to look for the quote in context, I discovered that he's
been using it for a while, all the way back to
Super
Snoozeday in April, and VPOTUS Joe Biden was using it in January and
February. Was one or both of them channeling Fannie Lou Hamer (who was
"sick and tired of being sick and tired"), or just going off in a new
direction? I'm not seeing fatigue as a winning strategy, in general.
Not that Romney's problems are limited to a catch-phrase.

On
the Newshour tonight, Mark Shields: "Mitt Romney is the first
presidential candidate, certainly in the last 35 years, who, wherever he
campaigns, does worse. ... The more they see him, the less they like
him."

Lost in translation

Sarcasm doesn't always communicate well; crossing an ocean, language
barrier and a gulf or two could make it even more difficult. Hence the
Iranian Fars News Agency took one of our "news sources"
a
little too seriously. Perhaps they're used to watching Fox
News and were hard pressed to recognized the difference between that
and The Onion, "reporting" that
Gallup
Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad To Obama.

Not one to miss an opportunity like that, the "ONN" invited readers to
"Please visit our Iranian subsidiary organization, Fars" for more on
this story, with a link to a screen shot from
the Fars News Agency site,
no longer featuring "its" report.

Found some of that voter fraud you were looking for

The Republican National Committee is busy cutting ties to the consulting
firm it hired to do the work, and sure, filed a complaint, why not?
The
L.A. Times reports that "Florida elections officials said
Friday that at least 10 counties have identified suspicious and possibly
fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by [Strategic Allied
Consulting,] working for the Republican Party of Florida." In one
county, the "problematic" applications were running around 25% of what
the state Republican Party turned in. Mickey Mouse was there in spirit,
even if his name didn't appear on any of the apps:

"Anyone with any sense would have known there was something wrong," said
elections supervisor Ann W. Bodenstein.

Most were changes in current registrations filed in the names of real
voters, but signatures were spelled differently than the applicants’
names. Fake house numbers were given, and date of births did not match
the names. The biggest red flag was that most of the forms were missing
Social Security numbers.

"is infamous for accusations that his firms have committed fraud by
tampering with Democratic voter registration forms and suppressing
votes."

Stand by for effusive outrage from Fox News, in 3, 2...

Frenemies and crowd-sourcing for fun and profit

But maybe "frenemies" is more love than Apple's feeling toward Google
these days? I mean, Google solved the problem of how to sort through six
million hits to the one thing you were actually looking for, and made
the web deeply useful. And that nice Maps thing that saves us from the
agony of MapQuest. But what have you done for us lately, Google?
And we're worried you're getting too big and powerful. And
profitable.

I've heard my share of the jokes and criticism, along with a smattering
of "it's not actually that bad" from people who actually are using the
new Apple mapping service (but then, they're Apple users, you can never
be sure they're not delusional). Still there's this:
Apple
CEO Tim Cook's "extremely sorry" that their new product isn't up to
snuff, and offering "a few interim solutions," which, huh, has a way to
get to Google Maps as the fourth choice. But steady on, Apple users!

"The more our customers use our Maps the better it will get and we
greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you."

In otherwords, after you get the wrong directions, drive off a bridge or
whatever, please do send them your "feedback" so they can make it
better? Hmm.

27.Sept.2012

Black and blue and white all over

What, is this some kind of football blog? As long as necessary...
One of the arguments in the pleadings to bring back the "real" refs was
about "player safety." Having been in my share of sanctioned contests
with officials (if not the NFL), I've been there, done that, and got the
bruised shins (and mended metatarsal) to show for it. It made me think
back to the many contests where fouls went just as far as players could
get away with, based on the referee's skill, attention, and response.
Oh, that's OK? How about
this then? That's how the
NFL was rolling at the start of this season, the "slightly out of
control" portion of the games starting earlier and lasting longer as the
replacements made more mistakes, and got increasingly flummoxed.

You almost feel sorry for them. (Having been a referee myself, I
can empathize anyway, but city league soccer is not quite the same
stakes, less mayhem, a lot fewer rules, cameras, and pension plans.)

The least contentious and injurious matches were the self-officiated
ones, by far. All but the newest and most clueless players know what's
fair and what's foul, and are quite capable of their own adjudication
when there's no back judge, side judge or instant replay. (One of the
very least contentious matches I ever played was when our city
league volunteers went to the state penitentiary for
a "friendly" match, which I'm not
remembering whether we had a referee or not now, but I do remember we
all had a good time.)

So, no pressure on the A-team when
it's
back at work this Saturday, but we do expect you to get everything
right. All the time. Just like the good old days.

26.Sept.2012

Stolen glory

Not likely to be the last word, but some good ones from Timothy Egan,
on
Zebra-nomics, what gave rise to Monday night's debacle,
distilling "pension reform" and union-bashing to terms everyone could
understand. If it spoils a good football game, it's just wrong.

"[T]he 'inaccurate reception,' as they're calling the
interception-that-became-a-touchdown Monday night, could spur many of
the couch-dwelling citizens of Football Nation to give Mitt Romney's
Bain-style corporate economics a hard look. It's worked so well for the
rest of the United States, this wealth gap, this creative destruction on
behalf of the noble job creators. Now look what it's doing to the true
national pastime.

"Just look at who wants to get the union referees back on the job today:
Scott Walker, the union-busting governor of Wisconsin, and Paul Ryan,
Romney's union-dissing running mate. 'Just give me a break!' Ryan
tweeted. 'It's time to get the real refs.'"

The NFL owners are holding out because they want to cut the referees'
pensions by about 0.03% of the league's revenue, the price of a
30-second commercial during the Super Bowl. How's that working out for
you?

25.Sept.2012

Do you ever listen to yourself?

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Tuesday that he
believes corporations should be banned from making political
contributions because corporate leaders often negotiate contracts with
Republican politicians they've helped elect, a situation he called an
extraordinary conflict of interest. Ha ha. Of course he didn't. He said
"he believes teachers' unions should be banned from making
political contributions because union leaders often negotiate contracts
with Democratic politicians they've helped elect," blah blah blah.

Welfare moms

A friend of Jeanette's (and later, mine) going back to the time they
were both young mothers and students at
Lewis-Clark
Normal School posted Larkin Warren's powerful op-ed for the NYT,
I
Was a Welfare Mother, one of a million stories.

"I was not an exception in that little Section 8 neighborhood. Among
those welfare moms were future teachers, nurses, scientists, business
owners, health and safety advocates. We never believed we were 'victims'
or felt 'entitled'; if anything, we felt determined. Wouldn't any decent
person throw a rope to a drowning person? Wouldn't any drowning person
take it?"

I started reading out loud and asked my wife about her experience from
back then.

"Everybody has a right to turn you in," Jeanette told me, speaking in
the present tense of yesterday-as-now. Neighbors, the postman. The
postman turned her in back in 1965, because she wasn't home when he
delivered the mail one day, and there were a couple of not-yet-unpacked
moving boxes in sight. She was suspended, but managed to explain things
to her social worker, that she was upstairs looking after the neighbors'
two boys. "She believed me, I was lucky." That was during her four
months on the New Deal's Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a.k.a.
welfare.

Later, after she'd married that man upstairs and was now raising her one
and his two kids, in Moscow, Idaho, she was on the
USDA's Commodity
Supplemental Food Program, and had had her own experience with the
food inspector knocking on the door.

"The commodities were distributed in a former garage on Main Street,
then the highway through the center of town. There was no sidewalk. We
waited in line along the highway for a turn because the building was so
small. George and I wrote a letter complaining that this was dangerous.
Very soon after, we got the knock on the door, the inspector flashed his
ID, said he had the right to examine everything in the house for
evidence of fraud. When I asked him what was the reason for suspicion,
he said it was because we took everything we were allowed to. Nobody did
that. They assumed I must be selling it. Oats, bags of flour, lard,
canned meat, foods that any normal human being would consider inedible.
But I'd been a 4H-er, I'd won blue ribbons and I spent Saturday and
Sunday when I should have been studying and cleaning house baking bread
and crackers and cookies and making soup ahead for lunches."

"The agent went through our closets, our checkbook, and then he sat down
at the table while we ate lunch and told stories of women who had 200
pairs of shoes in their closets."

We're in the 53% now, one or both of us having paid income tax for the
last 40+ years (along with payroll, sales, property, and state income
taxes). But there isn't a chance in hell we'd vote for Mitt Romney.

We wuz ROBBED!

Monday Night football last night devolved into an object lesson in
greed, incompetence and mismanagement. For those of you not familiar
with the story, after last year's brinksmanship between the National
Football League and the Players Association was settled in the nick of
time, this year's preason featured the league putting the squeeze on the
referees when their collective bargaining agreement expired. When
the two sides couldn't agree, the NFL locked out the refs and hired scab replacements. Bryan Knowles had a
breakdown
of the situation, ending with a fabulously incorrect
prediction that "by the time the regular season begins, I have a feeling
this story will be a non issue."

Week three ended last night, in a remarkable debacle, culminating with
what Jon Gruden said were "two of the worst calls at the end of a
football game I can remember." Especially the ONE at the end of the
game, its moment captured in Joshua Trujillo's still for the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, via the AP and the NYT (where I saw it, under
the headline
Refs
Turn Hail Mary Pass Into OMGs). The official on the right, back
judge Derrick Rhone-Dunn, is on top of the action, signally "time out"
(superfluously, since time had expired) because Green Bay's M.D.
Jennings had intercepted Seattle's last Hail Mary pass in the end
zone.

The official on the left, side judge Lance Easley, is looking at
Rhone-Dunn, incorrectly inferred the call was, and is signalling "touchdown,"
without
the possibility of actually seeing what did happen, or is happening.
Interception, game over, Packers win 12-7. Or... touchdown, game
effectively over, Seahawks win by at least 13-12. Greg Bishop:

"The play that best defines this N.F.L. season occurred at the end of
another game in which replacement officials looked less like actual
referees and more like the Keystone Kops. It was bizarre enough to
almost defy description."

So bizarre that there were more yards walked off in penalties than the
Seahawks managed on offense. So bizarre that Wisconsin's Governor Scott
Walker has become
a
union fan.

And just to heap absurdity on to comedy, never mind the minutes of
perfunctory kneel-downs that conclude some games already decided,
there's an actual rule that with time expired and the win settled
(whether by a play, or by the worst call ever), a touchdown must be
followed by a point-after try. (In this case the replacements' temporary
"error" in not enforcing the rule was more like mercy.) There's no
reason for it, It's Just Our Policy.

Just like stiff-arming the low-level employees who enable the
bazillion-dollar player salaries and owner profits.

Since the customers think the current situation is horrible (except of
course some Seattle fans short on self-esteem), here's an idea: what if
the Players Association said they wouldn't work until the real referees
are back on the job?

Update:USA Today reports that the
NFL admits mistakes were made, and the wrong result obtained.
"This should have been a penalty for offensive pass interference, which
would have ended the game." But calls get missed all the time, what are
you gonna do? As for the other reason Green Bay should have won, the
ball being intercepted after the offensive pass interference
that didn't get called on the final play, they stand by the "yeah we
made the wrong call on the field—touchdown—but no
indisputable evidence found on the video," even as they provide Rule 8,
Section 1, Article 3, Item 5 that explains how yeah, that was an
interception.

Data from the black lagoon

Back in the day, I knew a guy who worked at IBM in the group who
recovered data from the tape in "black box" flight recorders. He had a
real enthusiasm for the forensic challenge. I thought of him while
reading this fun story on TechHive, about
The
camera from the bottom of the lagoon. (It was Boston's lagoon, but
that doesn't make as good a headline, eh.)

24.Sept.2012

Multifaceted man

The medley of interviews with the two major party candidates for
president
on
60 Minutes last night was interesting.
ABC
News reviews that and other campaign news, including Romney's
doctor's "vigorous man" testimonial. We read there that Mitt accused the
president of "trying to fool people into thinking that I think things
that I don't," which has to be reconciled with the fact that a lot of
people are trying to figure out what Romney does think, with
mixed results. All the under, over and mixed-representation "ends at the
debates," he said.

"I hope I'll be able to describe my positions in a way that is accurate
and the people will make a choice as to which path they want to choose."

We can all hope for that.

One of the positions he reiterated in talking to Scott Pelley was his
plan for tax reform. Significantly lower income tax rates, "the current
rates less 20%," "All the rates come down."

"But unless people think there's going to be a huge reduction in the
taxes they owe, that's really not the case. Because we're also going to
limit deductions and exemptions, particularly for people at the high
end. Because I want to keep the current progressivity in the code. There
should be no tax reduction for high income people. What I would like to
do is to get a tax reduction for middle income families by eliminating
the tax for middle income families on interest, dividends, and capital
gains."

Lower rates, but no "reduction in revenue coming into the government,"
and not through the miracle of being on the right side of
the Laffer curve
(which we're not, given the lowest tax rates in many decades), but
rather some major remodeling. Any specifics? No. He'll lead Congress in
coming up with a solution, because that's what leaders do.

His "plan" to cut the size of government is about as detailed as
a hand-drawn slide that would be laughed out of an undergraduate
political science class. Repeal Obamacare, transform major federal
programs into block grants and reduce the rate of growth, "as well as go
after the fraud and abuse and inefficiency that's always part of a large
institution like our government," said with the sincerity and cadence of
fine print boilerplate.

Romney said repealing Obamacare would save $100 billion, and I looked to
see what estimate he might be talking about. No doubt there are plenty
to choose from, but the
Congressional
Budget Office's estimate in July, after the Supreme Court
dashed hopes for five men in black robes to undo what Congress could
not, had something like that number but with the opposite sign. That is,
the 10 year effect of repealing Obamacare would be to increase
the deficit by $109 billion.

Not that $100 billion this way or that addresses a budget out of whack
by about ten times that amount (annually), but it would be a 1%
start ... in the wrong direction.

23.Sept.2012

Good timing

While working in the office this morning, I heard an animal pecking
around in the gutter, and went outside to yell at a magpie. "GET OFF MY
HOUSE." The second time it happened, I went out and shooshed it, and
noticed that there was a cacaphonous chorus in the trees. Starlings,
probably. What were they talking about? The change of the seasons?

Maybe. Anyway, I climbed up on our brick wing wall to have a look at
what the magpie had found interesting, and yes, of course, the gutters
needed cleaning. We live under an old oak tree, eh. So I got out the
ladder and gloves and a bucket and made the rounds, a little dusty but
better on the dry side than wet, I can tell you from long
experience.

I felt a few drops of rain when I was about two-thirds of the way done.
But it didn't start raining, and I figured it was just one of those
funny little teases that pass over the desert now and then, virga
hanging a little lower than it should.

But no. A couple hours later, some genuine RAIN under an overcast sky.
The sound of water on the roof, and falling in downspouts is
musical. Beautiful weather today.

App magic

Down toward the bottom of Jenna Wortham's description of tapping into
"useful
apps providing services in the nick of time," she quotes Altimeter
Group analyst Susan Etlinger raising the issue of intimacy, and of
safety, which had popped into my mind about the time "a clean black Audi
pulled up, with a chatty young man at the wheel" in the third
paragraph.

But everything's worked out well so far, and the only thing standing
between her and continuing discount instant gratification seems to be a
bit of guilt about hiring servants.

Data-mining evangelicals for Romney

Ralph Reed is back from being exposed as a humbug and being trounced as
a candidate himself, now working to apply "an estimated $10 million to
$12 million from contributors across the Republican spectrum" for a
"microtargeted get-out-the-evangelical-vote operation."

In this morning's local paper, an insert from the
Idaho Technology Council
featured local entrepeneurs in the field of data analytics,
including ProClarity, which got subsumed into Microsoft, and the
founder's next company, Whitecloud Analytics, focused on the healthcare
industry as it moves to electronic recordkeeping and the datamining
opportunities that will bring.

"To identify religious voters most likely to vote Republican, the group
used 171 [parameters].

"It acquired megachurch membership lists. It mined public records for
holders of hunting or boating licenses, and warranty surveys for people
who answered yes to the question 'Do you read the Bible?' It determined
who had downloaded conservative-themed books, like Going Rogue by
Sarah Palin, onto their e-readers, and whether those people also drove
pickup trucks. It drilled down further, looking for married voters with
children, preferably owners of homes worth more than $100,000.

"Finally, names that overlapped at least a dozen or so [parameters] were
overlaid with voting records to yield a database with the addresses and,
in many cases, e-mail addresses and cellphone numbers of the more than
17 million faith-centric registered voters—not just evangelical
Protestants but also Mass-attending Catholics. The group is also
reaching out to nearly two million more people who have never registered
to vote."

Equinox

Wealth of a nation

Jeanette likes to kid me about a remark I made when I was young and
foolish, about my journal-keeping and how I never edited what I wrote.
It was close enough to true at the time, but no closer to genuinely clever
then than now. Put another way, being pithy is not the same as being
succinct. But hey, this isn't about me, it's a tangential point that
popped into my head while considering the amusing
etymology of a translated tweet gone viral. What made it go viral
was the essential idea which can be—and has
been—distilled into less than 140 characters, in whatever
language works for you:

"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's
where the rich use public transportation."

An innovator's dilemma

Two bad scenes this week, countervailing the celebrated rollout of the
exciting (I assume) new iPhone: the brilliant ad campaign by Samsung
(can they still sell those things after the court case?), such as
here, and
here
and yes, that's a minute-and-a-half ad that I went out of my way to
watch; and the uncomfortable question posed by Joe Nocera's op-ed:
has Apple peaked?
It's not just that Steve Jobs has left.

"When Jobs returned to the company in 1997, after 12 years in exile,
Apple was in deep trouble. It could afford to take big risks and,
indeed, to search for a new business model, because it had nothing to
lose. Fifteen years later, Apple has a hugely profitable business model
to defend—and a lot to lose. Companies change when that
happens."

Stump farm

535 of our highest-paid federal employees called it a day and went home
to campaign to keep their jobs (or in the case of two-thirds of the
Senators, just went home) after semi-successfully kicking the can, or
something, down the road for six months. My expectations were so low for
this pre-election rump session I have to admit I wasn't paying
attention, and were it not for
Gail
Collins I wouldn't know how it all turned out.

The headline news is that there'll be no repatriated polar bear
carcasses to help Jon Tester's re-election bid. (Kudos to Mitch
McConnell for that!) And no Farm Bill. Still not sure about the U.S.
Postal Service, but no help yet for escaping the unnecessary bind
Congress put it in, at least.

No solution for the temporary, extended, expiring tax cuts that no one
wants to be responsible for letting expire. No solution for the spending
sequestration that wasn't really supposed to happen. No solution for the
30% cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors coming on the first of the
year. No jobs bill, of course. No shortage of
finger
pointing. No competition for the
least
productive or
lowest
approval trophies.

We do have a half-year continuing resolution to keep the government
running as best it can while we see how many of these bums can be thrown
out and try again next year.

21.Sept.2012

Etch-a-sketchy

So, the Romneys'
2011 tax returns are
out, and along with telling us they gave a ton to charity ($4
million, "nearly 30% of their income") and paid a surprisingly low
effective tax rate (14.1%), they found a way to "disclose" 20 years'
worth of "information," with a letter from their accountant (notarized!)
saying it's all really true. Ropes & Gray LLP Trustee
Brad Malt notes
that they only deducted a little over half of that chunk of charity
however:

"The Romneys' generous charitable donations in 2011 would have
significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys
thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to
the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of
income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10
years."

"I don't pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid
more than legally due, I don't think I'd be qualified to become
President."

A certain amount of hand-waving about this tax return is understandable:
the federal return alone runs way past 300 pages. Some of what I
saw:

the advantageous tax treatment of dividends and capital gains made their
effective tax rate a scant 9.2% before the AMT kicked it up to
14.1%;.

they reported more than $1.5 million in state income taxes and property
tax paid, on federal Schedule A;

Mitt's businesses of public speaking and being a director of Marriott
International earned him $450,000 or so, and allowed him to pay
$20,000-some self-employment tax, into Social Security and
Medicare;

$3.5 million of their net income (19.2%) came from foreign
countries;

there are a lot of mysteries around the world (in the Cayman Islands,
the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg...); blind trusts, don't
you know.

The wealth of nations

Professor Lotterman's latest gives
a
compact explanation of what "public goods" are, and why investing in
them can float your boat. Down the Mississippi, say. (Actually, it's not
his latest, it ran in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press two
weeks ago, but is apparently delivered to the Idaho Statesman by
second string Pony Express riders. Still, timeless understanding.)

"[U]nder-spending on roads, bridges and other public works, undermines
the productivity of our economy. But it doesn't seem to be much of a
priority for any presidential candidate or for Congress."

The money quote is slipped in with Brazilian soybeans:

"One factor that distinguishes rich from poor countries is that the
wealthy ones learned to invest in public works earlier and more
effectively."

Are we on the right track, or getting derailed by anti-government
think tankers?

"We no longer spend enough to offset the wearing-out of facilities our
parents and grandparents built. Like a South Bronx slumlord, we maintain
current consumption by depreciating out our assets."

Made in the USA

"I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your
world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we
observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it
because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and
taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need
engineers that can build stuff, solve problems."

A related item
linked
from Slashdot, Kentucky legislators were recently
shocked,
shocked to find the ACT test has questions about evolution on it.
Standardized testing, who knew, right? Sen. David Givens (R-Greensburg)
"said he asked the ACT representatives about possibly returning to a
test personalized for Kentucky, but he was told that option was very
expensive and time-consuming." And yeah, crazy.

20.Sept.2012

Your mountain is ready

Dust and sunburn-free, huge props to Teddy Sunders, Parker Howell,
William Walsh, and the beautiful swan song's author, Theodore Seuss
Geissel. You can't help but think he would have loved Burning Man and
his
words coming to life on YouTube.

Thanks to my friend Heywood, and Facebook for sending this my way on
another strangely orange morning in Burning Idaho.

De-Occupy Boise

"Pursuant to a court order, the State was also forced to reveal its plans
for 'Operation De-Occupy Boise.' The documents, which the federal court
ordered released [in redacted form] despite the State's opposition,
revealed emails between law enforcement and state officials about
increasing security at the Capitol as a result of Occupy Boise. As part
of a later plan ... crafted by Idaho State Police in coordination with
the Boise Police Department, the Ada County Prosecuting Attorney's
office, and state agencies, the documents also offer insight into an
enforcement operation that would have included a 'media staging area'
and arrests and detention of protesters, despite that the new state's
anti-camping statute only authorizes ticketing violators, not
arrest."

Le miserable parking situation

That's what's planned for Boise today, with a touring Broadway show at
the Morrison Center and the home opener of the local football team
expected to bring
70,000
people to the Boise State campus. The news release charitably
mentions "regular university classes" (good luck with that) and the
women's volleyball team.

Boise State has 7,700 parking spaces... so a $10 spot seems wildly
underpriced, doesn't it? If you're crazy enough to try driving down
there (or unfortunate enough to have no alternatives), check
the
parking news.

19.Sept.2012

Facts about taxes

The Tax Foundation's map of "nonpayers" was making the rounds yesterday,
with the top 10 states highlighted in bright red, and the top 10 payers
not quite so highlighted in pale blue. The NYT provides a quieter version
today, with 2010 data sorted into three tiers colored in neutral
gray.

But more relevant is the detail
they
provide under the question "what about other taxes?" When state,
local, payroll and other federal taxes are included, there is no
deadbeat half of the country to be found. Even those "lucky duckies"
with income under $20,000 a year manage to chip in an average of 17.4%
in total taxes.

"States the get the most money from the federal government relative to
their taxes paid are more likely to vote Republican in presidential
elections, and increasingly so."

He concludes the same thing you hear from politicians speaking on the
record: it's not sustainable.

Middle management

Not that Peggy Noonan persuades me, but I imagine her opinion
that it's time
for an intervention says what a lot of Republicans are thinking
about now. Talk about your buyer's remorse! Think of it: we could have
Newt Gingrich on the stump right now. Or Rick Santorum. Herman Cain,
even. I miss Herman Cain.

"This is not how big leaders talk, it's how shallow campaign operatives
talk: They slice and dice the electorate like that, they see everything
as determined by this interest or that. They’re usually young enough and
dumb enough that nobody holds it against them, but they don’t know
anything. They don't know much about America."

Mitt wanted to soothe the base and win the middle, but he's provided a
bit too much off-the-cuff, inelegant reality TV. All you shiftless
students, seniors, soldiers, working stiffs who've given up
personal responsibility and care for your lives, get out of the
way! Israel, we're kicking the can down the road. Everybody, stop
apologizing!

No wonder there is ample wide-eyed incredulity to go around. Speaking of
operatives, Noonan's not ready to just concede the obvious and wait for
the next time around. We've still got seven weeks to "right this thing,"
"to stabilize it." But first, admit the obvious:

"It's time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one."

And then... fire the staff and start over? I hear Romney likes to fire
people, so that would suit him. And then... it's time "big, serious,
thoughtful speeches must be given." Yes, I'm sure some of those will fix
it! Some "fresh writing and fresh thinking."

And more people, so Romney's not out there by himself. Bring in the "old
ones," "Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush, and the young ones, like Susana
Martinez and Chris Christie and Marco Rubio—and even Paul Ryan."
There might be a problem fitting an appearance into the calendar,
though:

"Some of them won't want to do it because they're starting to think
Romney's a loser and they don't want to get loser on them."

18.Sept.2012

Not elegantly stated

The man born with a silver foot in his mouth is working to walk back the
private persona exposed by the recording smuggled out of a campaign
event and forwarded to Mother Jones. The campaign's first
response was to note that his comments were "not elegantly stated," but
I imagine they were elegant enough for those clinking glasses and
murmuring agreement before cracking out the checkbooks.

I haven't watched all of the videos (but I do expect The Daily
Show to have the best excerpts for tonight's lampooning), so I
missed the one where
he
declined an SNL invitation
out of concern it would come across as "slapstick." (Do you suppose Tina
Fey could come up with a Paul Ryan impression?)

Not that selecting out income tax over all other tax burdens makes for a
legitimate argument (or one with legs—10% or fewer people pay no
federal taxes), but
the
Tax Foundation's map of 10 highest percentages of non-income tax
payers makes an interesting geographical statement: the south, and
Idaho. This is not "base" territory for Obama.

And not that fact-checking is going to resolve the questions raised by
elite tone-deafness, and the devestation of our middle class by
outsourcing all work that can be outsourced to those who will work more
cheaply, but
Glenn
Kessler starts with the "conflating": mixing up a rich emotional
stew of "them," that aren't like us. We pay taxes, they do not. We
don't like Obama, they do. We don't rely on government assistance, they
think they're entitled to it.

It doesn't matter whether this amounts to mere "shading of the facts,"
"significant omissions and/or exaggerations" or to the three Pinocchio
level of "significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions";
these are emotional "truths" that amplify the leadership
entitlement that Romney and his supporters expect to reclaim.

As a significant bonus, they reinforce the notion that taxes should be
lower for rich people, too. Never mind that the well-endowed and
well-connected Romneys pay lower rates than most middle and upper middle
income earners. One reason to keep those tax returns secret: the
complexity and detail are doubtless sufficient to occupy the
conversation from here through October, and beyond.

So here's the $64,000,000 question to which you already know the answer:
does it matter to Romney's supporters that their guy is all
sanctimonious and patriotic when he knows the cameras are on him,
and sings an insider song when he thinks it's a private affair?
Please, put your best speech writers on this problem, and give us the
elegant statement of how you plan to ignore the half of the
country that's irrelevant to you.

Update: David Brooks is not always my cup of tea, but he has
worked to study culture and social groups, and he has some good insights
about the people behind the statistics, those nuances that
Thurston
Howell Romney seems incapable of picking up. Even with the benefit
of the doubt as to the candidate's kindness and decency, "he's running a
depressingly inept presidential campaign."

17.Sept.2012

Wisconsin do-over

If the state Supreme Court tilts conservative (as
we're
told it does by Patrick Marley and Mark Johnson
of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), then they should vote in favor
of the U.S. and state constitutions, shouldn't they? Well, we'll see,
after Dane County judge Juan Colas threw out most of Governor Scott
Walker's signature union-busting legislation.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has, on occasion, defied expectations,
[Marquette University Law School professor Paul] Secunda said
Wisconsin's highest court appears less inclined to do so. "This is not
a court," he said, "that instills a great deal of faith in people who
want to see a nonpartisan, deliberative process take place."

We've already seen that corporations and unlimited campaign funds enjoy
"free speech" protection these days, what could be more conservative
than free speech, free association and equal representation under the
law for workers, too?

Yeah I know, crazy talk.

Tell us how you really feel, Mitt

Nice to have him tell
the
truth for a change, sucking up to a dining room full of swells...
as he pitches them to chip in to his campaign. Classy.

The camera operator is perhaps among the disaffected, those
47, 48—hey, maybe 51%—folks who are behind the President,
for whatever combination of reasons, "dependent upon government,"
as he put it, and with a belief that they're entitled to all sorts of
things.

Hmm, an overblown sense of entitlement, you don't say.

It's Romney unplugged, as David Corn puts it:

"With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter
what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He
displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow
citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who
don't contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he
viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and
the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character,
fortitude, and initiative. Yet Romney explained to his patrons that he
could not speak such harsh words about Obama in public, lest he insult
those independent voters who sided with Obama in 2008 and whom he
desperately needs in this election. These were sentiments not to be
shared with the voters; it was inside information, available only to the
select few who had paid for the privilege of experiencing the real
Romney."

13.Sept.2012

Libya, Egypt and the Butterfly Effect

That's the subtitle of professor Juan Cole's blog post about
Romney
jumping the shark, but most of it is about what's behind the scenes
regarding this "low-budget bad propaganda film gotten up by two-bit
frauds and Christian supremacists, and then promoted by two-bit Egyptian
and Libyan fundamentalists," looking to gain some sort of relevance by
stirring up trouble. His hopeful conclusion is that

"the violence and extremism of the hardliners on both sides is a
phantasm of the past, not a harbinger of the future. The wave of
democratic politics sweeping the region has left the haters behind,
reducing them to desperate and senseless acts of violence that will gain
them no good will, no popularity, no political credibility."

And perhaps more importantly,

"A little-noted major event of Wednesday was the democratic selection of
a new prime minister in Libya for the first time in the country’s
history. Mustafa Abushagur defeated the Muslim Brotherhood candidate
handily. Abushagur for a long time taught college in the US, at the
University of Alabama Huntsville. Libyans again showed themselves
nationalist and non-fundamentalist. This remarkable achievement, and
what it portends for the shape of Libyan politics, will be drowned out
by the atrocity in Benghazi, but it is the development that is likely to
be marked by future historians as a turning point in Libya and in the
Middle East."

Beclowned

Definitely a reflexive verb with reason to exist, never mind that it
came from yet another conservative blogger pointing a finger at "the
media," as the
right
doubles down on what a good driver they've got in the back seat.
Rather than reporting on the facts on the ground in North Africa, "the
media wanted to focus on Mitt Romney" you say? No, Mitt Romney wanted
the media to focus on him, and mission accomplished.

Getting ahead of the news cycle is not such a good strategy if your
tactic is to do it with both feet in your mouth. What better measure
could there be that Peggy Noonan was offering sage advice?

"...everybody should cool it, absorb, think and then say only serious
and meaningful things, and never allow themselves to look like they are
using it as a political opportunity. Romney looked weak today."

But hey, the "never apologize" meme is popular enough; we're
exceptional, damn it! (Mitt
wrote
the book.)
Even if we sometimes get confused about what values it is we hold most
dearly. The right to express religious bigotry? Yes, definitely. The
right for idiots in an election campaign (who enjoy Secret Service
protection) to freely second-guess career diplomats living and working
in harm's way? Absolutely.

"More troubling are the earlier chapters, the ones about foreign policy.
They showcase a politician prone to cliché, to vilification of the
current administration coupled with the white washing of the previous
one, and perhaps most important, a politician without any ideas of how
to deal with the world's complex problems."

The NYT
roundup of reactions includes the statesmanlike, from the
chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King (R-NY):
"When something tragic happens and a quick statement is made, it can be
interpreted as political. I would probably have waited 12 or 24 hours
and put out a more comprehensive statement."

To the beclowned, Senator Jon Kyl employing a rape analogy.

Update:
Bill Keller's analysis is a worthy read:
Mitt
and Bibi: Diplomacy as Demolition Derby. For a man who has so few
fixed ideas, Romney seems to have latched on to a couple in his latest
bumbling, and left himself no way out. It seems too late now to do "the
right, the classy, the traditional and, incidentally, the politically
popular thing to do" by tempering his remarks, after he's amplified them.
Rather the same reason he can't release any more tax returns after he's
so adamantly refused to do what seemed the simple, obvious and right
thing to do, months ago.

12.Sept.2012

Jumping the gun

Josh Marshall:
When
you learn they're not ready. Neither the uneasy "peace" nor our
national timeout on partisan bickering lasted all the way to the end of
the 11th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attack. The Romney campaign's
attempt to get ahead of the news cycle is pathetic enough, but
somebody really needs to confiscate
Reince
Priebus' Twitter account.

(My thoughts about September 11 remain my own; but I did appreciate the
chance to reflect on
what
George Takei wrote the day after it happened. "Filled with
conflicting emotions," at least.)

Rethinking interviews (and waste)

Hadn't heard of TerraCycle or Tom Szaky, but I've heard some people tell
stories such as his about
how
they interview job candidates. I have a few of my own stories.
I remember the really good candidates, because I ended up working with
them. I forget the bad ones, because I have no reason to remember.

And I remember learning in a class at a prestigious university (I think
it was) that one of the most reliable features of the interview as a
selection tool is that candidates most like the interviewer get chosen.
Viewed in that light, Szaky's treatise says more about who he is than
what makes a good interview, or candidate. He doesn't put much weight on
where someone went to school, because that didn't matter in his life.
Good schools just make people overly ambitious, amirite?

But he likes a nicely formatted résumé. And candidates
who use more than two fingers to type. And his "gut reaction," in five
to ten minutes, not counting the typing test, making an Excel pivot
table and a PowerPoint slide show and stuff.

Some of what he says makes good sense, maybe even all of it does.
But it sounds like a random walk through justifying those gut
reactions. From the employer's point of view loyalty is a fine
thing:

"Have the candidates jumped around from job to job and industry to
industry? Or do they join businesses and stay? This is important because
turnover is costly to an organization."

Turnover is costly to employees, too, and I can think of a lot more
instances of employers failing in the loyalty department than the
converse. But TerraCyle has
an
interesting business model (collect your waste and send it to them),
and a great
story of starting on the ground floor, "boy meets worm."

Tempest in a trashpot

The curious saga of Ada County's push to make more energy out of its
trash has taken new twists, as
Cynthia
Sewell reports in today's Idaho Statesman. The county
commission has long been the site of two-against-one battles,
demonstrating just what a bad idea that sort of management can be.
Commissioner Sharon Ullman is a lame duck, having lost her primary to
David Case, who has been appointed to fill the remainder of Vern
Bisterfeldt's term, while he awaits a contest against two others in
November's election, carrying on Bisterfeldt's work of annoying
Ullman in the interim.

But beyond the personalities on parade, there are the questions
regarding Dynamis
Energy's $75 million plan to build a trash-fueld power plant at the
county landfill. The two commissioners in favor assure us everything is
in order and nothing to worry about. Citizens are petitioning, the
county Prosecutor and Sheriff have teamed up to appoint a private
investigator (to be supervised by special prosecutor Mark Hiedeman,
Bannock County's prosecuting attorney), and our county tried to quash a
public records disclosure request by labeling the memorandum of
the county engineer calling for a competent peer review of the project a
"personnel matter."

Commissioner Case made
the
memo available to the newspaper, and it's simple and to the point:
the "experimental technologies" (as the contract itself deems them)
warrant competent engineering review before the county proceeds. As a
licensed Professional Engineer, Jim Farrens knows the limits of his
expertise and they don't include what's needed for this task. "It is
entirely appropriate for Ada County to retain the services of a
consultant engineering firm which is professionally qualified to perform
this peer review," he wrote.

That's an engineering matter. The company has declared the details
of its proposal as "proprietary," thus confirming their experimental
nature, and providing further cause for independent review. Whoever
denied the Statesman's public records request was
misguided, at least, inappropriately using "personnel matter" as
an excuse to avoid disclosure of the engineer's professional
concern.

10.Sept.2012

Frank VanderSloot Declares War on Idaho Teachers

He's good for the local newspaper's ad sales, at least. He bought the
back page of Sunday's Insight section for a "Community Page," as the
gothic heading declares itself, above a union bashing screed.
He's promoting yes votes on propostions 1, 2 and 3, the citizens'
opportunity to vote yay or nay on the education "reform" that
Superintendent of Public Education Tom Luna pulled out of his hat after
being re-elected.

Of course VanderSloot would assure you that he's all for teachers
(just look at that nice uncaptioned picture of an attractive young woman
with a student!) but oh, those "union bosses," who have "taken advantage
of these great teachers for decades"! "The unions hate Proposition 2,"
Frank tells us, "because it significantly increases teacher pay without
union control."

"Significantly increased teacher pay" would be front-page news, so that
claim is slightly incredible.
The opposition
provides a simpler argument: linking teacher pay to standardized
testing, the premise of No Child Left Behind, is a way to increase the
number of teachers teaching excellence in standardized test-taking.

"Melaleuca hires over 500 new Idaho employees every year. At any one time
Melaleuca has dozens of unfilled high-paying positions because there are
not enough qualified people to fill them. Better education would make a
world of difference to Melaleuca and to the young people we hire."

I see they need a $9.50/hr "Machine operator" in Idaho Falls, putting
product into tubes and bottles. You'll need the "ability to work under
stress," and to read bottles, product, invoices, etc. Can you lift 65
lbs.? Stand and walk for an 8 hour shift? Do you have attention to
detail?

A 4 day/month "shipping specialist" position has been open since April,
and offers $8.00/hr. The job description is "null," which maybe
the "SQL Developer" they've also been looking for since April could fix.
You could be their "Hot Shot" for $7.25/hr, or "Express Verification"
for $7.70/hr...

There are a few things in the jobs currently on offer that sound like
they might be high-paying, but those show a pay rate of $0.00, so it's
hard to say. No doubt the right person for Associate General Counsel for
Regulatory Affairs could make good money, and help out with the Romney
campaign in his spare time, too.

But "dozens of unfilled high-paying positions" are not shown on
their
corporate opportunities page at this time. I suppose "at any
one time" means "at some time," and "don't hold us to this actual
claim as if it were true"?

9.Sept.2012

How's the weather up there?

If my dad were still alive, he'd be 93 today, and he would really enjoy
reading the feature in the New York Times Magazine about how
the
weatherman is not a moron. Not that he would have needed to be told
that fact, but that he would have enjoyed reading about the latest and
greatest technology applied to the science he learned in a crash course
in the 1940s, before shipping out to the Pacific to forecast weather for
the Navy Air Transport Service, from Kwajalein, and later Majuro.
It was an inexact science back then, and remains so today, but it's a
lot less inexact than it used to be.

"In 1814, the French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace postulated that
the movement of every particle in the universe should be predictable as
long as meteorologists could know the position of all those particles
and how fast they are moving. Unfortunately, the number of molecules in
the earth's atmosphere is perhaps on the order of 100 tredecillion,
which is a 1 followed by 44 zeros. To make perfect weather predictions,
we would not only have to account for all of those molecules, but we
would also need to solve equations for all 100 tredecillion of them at
once."

More power has definitely been applied to the task. Rather than 64,000
meteorologists working simultaneously (as one pioneer thought we needed),
we now have things like the IBM Bluefire supercomputer

"in the basement of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in
Boulder, Colo., is so large that it essentially creates its own weather.
The 77 trillion calculations that Bluefire makes each second, in its
mass of blinking lights and coaxial cable, generate so much radiant
energy that it requires a liquid cooling system. The room where Bluefire
resides is as drafty as a minor-league hockey rink, and it's loud enough
that hearing protection is suggested."

My dad would've liked that, too, as an early adopter of computers for
his business, running programs off of cassette tapes once upon a
time.

7.Sept.2012

Idaho's anti-Obamacare push poll

Six hundred registered voters in Idaho were reportedly polled by "a
national survey firm" that its three sponsors didn't bother naming, to
provide fodder for the foregone conclusions of the Free Enterprise PAC,
Idaho Freedom Foundation and Idaho Chooses Life.

News
release! "Statewide poll finds widespread opposition to insurance
exchange & expansion of Medicaid," just as it was designed to do
from everything I can see. The presser quotes reliable partisan hacks
Wayne Hoffman, Lou Esposito and David Ripley, celebrating the success of
their "survey," followed by an addendum with "key question and answer
sets" that give you just a taste of how this work is done.

"Blue Cross and several big business groups have been pushing the Idaho
Legislature to create an 'insurance exchange' as part of the ObamaCare
overhaul. Opponents argue we don’t need more government control over
health care: Bringing down health care costs requires free market
competition so that families have more choices. What do you think?

"Should we go along with a state insurance exchange or should the
Legislature allow more companies to sell health insurance in Idaho?"

Not that there's anything about a state health insurance exchange to
give people more information about what's available to them that
prohibits more competition widening the playing field, but feel free to
choose between "Enact ObamaCare/Exchange" or "Free Market Competition"
(or volunteering your own answer).

Conservative blogger Dennis Mansfield was so taken with the press
release shouting at him that
he
says it was HUGE. His blog post was picked up on the
Spokesman-Review'sHuckleberries
blog and discussion ensued, with Dennis assuring us that
"even the hierarchy of the invisible GOP back-roomers respect these
pollsters' results."

Maybe the back-roomers (and Dennis, for all I know) actually get to see
the whole poll, but since all that's being touted is a press release,
and the two sample questions/answers provided are ridiculously biased, it
seems we'll just have to let the GOP back-room death panel take care of
killing off Idaho's active participation in the Affordable Care Act.

Disloyal opposition

At last week's RNC, the PBS Newshour coverage included one
rebuttal snippet that I saw, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin in the
booth with the regular news team. Tonight, a matching segment had
Virginia's Governor (and chairman of the Republican Governors
Association)
Bob
McDonnell doing a one-on-one with Hari Sreenivasan, but not in the
broadcasting booth. It was in some sort of spare room off the side of
the hall, decorated with an an anti-Obama backdrop the Republican team
whipped up. Classy. Not sure why PBS thought that was OK, but bully for
the opposition, it made a visual statement every time the camera was on
McDonnell.

While he opened with mild flattery for the "great speeches," the red
letter denial reinforced his insincerity. "At the end of the day,"
he kept saying, he had bullet points to hammer. Gas prices are up.
National debt is highest ever. (He forgot to say "We built that!")
Tomorrow's jobs report will show stubbornly high unemployment.

"But this is a serious election, in serious times, and it really comes
down to whether or not President Obama's policies have worked..."

and he reads the numbers to say no, which is why he's talking in front
of a banner than says OBAMA ISN'T WORKING, eh? Sreenivasan redirects
to the question of "better off," "inherited deep mess," and "positive
trajectory?"

"The President didn't create the problem. He's just made it worse"
is McDonnell's talking point. Worse? Really? No, of course not
really, but it's a simple rhetorical device that assures the already
convinced. Sreenivasan pushes back, McDonnell insists it's not accurate
to say we're headed in the right direction "because it's not enough
jobs." (You remember all those job initiatives the Republicans in
Congress proposed, don't you? Well no, you don't, because the only
initiatives regarding jobs they've offered were to reduce
public sector employment, and eliminate collective bargaining
rights.) Then the over-regulation, over-taxed, "anti-business" and
"anti-free enterprise" canard-orama, cherry on the top:

"The president came to Roanoke and said you know if you built a
business, you really didn't, ah, make that happen, somebody else made
that happen. That is not resonating with entrepreneurs around the
country."

He's a smooth talker, this Bob McDonnell, passing off that cynical
talking point under his $200 haircut just like it was God's honest
truth. Sreenivasan pushed back, ever so gently, gave him a chance to
confess that well yeah, the Republicans have been "resonating" that lie
with everyone who will listen for weeks (or is it months already):

"That particular ... phrase has become such a central theme, I saw it in
Tampa playing over and over again, when you see the ... context, it
doesn't seem like that's what he was saying, but that's what the
Republicans are riding on, it's essentially a speech a bit out of
context. ..."

But he didn't force the point, eased off to a softball that McDonnell
dodged without breaking his smug, relaxed smile.

"The next sixty days, how am I going to be able to believe anything
either side says on these TV commercials that I'm going to be
inundated with, especially in a battleground state like Virginia?"

McDonnell acknowledged "that's a fair question." So would have this
been: Governor, isn't that fundamentally dishonest to take a quote
out of context, pretend the president said something he didn't say,
and turn it into a theme for your Party? Aren't you building your
campaign on a lie? But he didn't make McDonnell answer
that question.

"Look at results," McDonnell said. "When you strip it all away, talk
really is cheap." He's certainly supported that talking point
convincingly. His state's doing fine, bipartisan, good unemployment (he
must be a hell of a guy), but at the federal level, just across the
river,

"more combat, more divisiveness, more of a toxic political atmosphere,
less actual results, we've been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy about
three times in the last couple years..."

Bankruptcy, seriously? And sir are you saying that your party has not
been the prime mover behind divisiveness and toxicity?

Still more questions that didn't get asked. But rest assured, the same
tired, toxic, divisive talking points the governor was reciting in front
of the "NOT WORKING" banner will be recited ad nauseum all the way to
November (and, if Obama wins re-election, for FOUR MORE YEARS).

Up, up and... awww

If the stock market is a leading indicator these days, as it sometimes
has been, happy days are just around the corner. Maybe.
Yesterday's
report (I guess it was) ascribes the cause as "decisive moves by the
head of the European Central Bank to preserve the euro zone" (and notes
that previous such euphoria had previously deflated), so thank you head
banker over there.

"The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index surged nearly 2 percent,
surpassing the peak reached earlier this year and hitting a level last
seen in January 2008, before the financial crisis. The Nasdaq composite
index rose to its highest point since 2000."

You might say that the Nasdaq composite is better off than it was four
years ago. And eight years ago, too. (Given that it was crazy high in
late '99 and 2000 as the dot.com bubble popped, we could hear "highest
since 2000" for a long, long time, but what it means, at least, is that
it's higher than it was at the peak of the housing and mortgage creative
financing bubble in 2007.)

Also noted is that "a weak employment number could easily derail
investor optimism," and sure enough,
hiring
slowed to just 96,000 jobs added last month. The nominal jobless
rate fell to 8.1% "but economists said that was a sign more unemployed
workers were discouraged about the prospect of finding new jobs."

So, them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose.

6.Sept.2012

United we stand

There's no comparison between one convention and another for a partisan;
you love yours, theirs is ridiculous. Still, this season's pair is
asymmetric because of the different stories each side needs to tell.
The Republicans have to convince us things are bad, horrible,
nightmareish even, or as stand-up comic Chuck Norris put it, one step
away from
a
thousand years of darkness. Whereas the Democrats have to convince
us that things are not nearly as bad as they might seem, and are,
in fact, better than they were 4 years ago. Whether you believe that
depends on whether you lost your job, or found a new one, or whether
your standard of living is upwardly or downwardly mobile.

Oddly enough, anyone whose investment portfolio bears any resemblance to
the broader stock market can answer easily enough. S&P500, up 72%,
DowJones Industrials, up 57%, Nasdaq up more than 100%, corporate
profits up 2.5x between Q2 of this year and the Q4 2008 nadir. Not that
they've shared their winnings much, but you'd think Republicans
would be overjoyed. They're certainly better off than they were
4 years ago, even if (as Andy Borowitz put it), we can't tell if Romney
was better off 4 years ago because he won't show us his taxes. For
anything they think isn't going right, they have someone to
blame, and they're exercising that prerogative every chance they get.

After all the negativity of Tampa, it's nice to hear from the happy
party, the party of cooperation and optimism. Rich Trumka, president of
the AFL-CIO, put it simply enough last night:

"Shared prosperity is the only kind that lasts."

4.Sept.2012

Thank you for your support

Not sure how this could have happened, but I completely missed Gail
Collins' takes on the Republi-con. Here's her Aug. 29 column:
Renovating
Mitt Romney. Of course you already know that the Tampa Convention
Center was built with mostly public funds. But wait, there's more!

"'We built it' is one of the themes here, at the government-underwritten
convention in a government-subsidized convention center in a city that
rose on the sturdy foundation of government-subsidized flood insurance.
But no taxpayer dollars were expended in the attempt to put together a
New Mitt.

"None. Really, it was just private corporations and rich people."

You might have had a notion that journalists outnumbered the delegates,
but you might not have guessed it was outnumbering by
a
factor of six and a half. 15,000 credentialed journalists, 2,286
delegates. Even if you add in the 2,125 alternates, that's 3.4
journalists per.

You might not know (I did not know) just how much you were supporting
the two nominating conventions.
$136
million by one report. More than $25,000 per delegate?! Hooray for
some spillover into Tampa's and Charlotte's economy.

"Listening to the convention speeches, it was easy to get the impression
that every high-ranking Republican in the country had parents who were
truck drivers or convenience store workers who moved up entirely through
their own efforts. Also, there were a lot of grandfathers who worked in
the mines. ...

"Shortly before the convention, Mitt Romney had pressed the coal theme
with an appearance in Ohio, where he stood with a group of sooty miners
whose sad, solemn faces seemed to underscore their concern about big
government. Also, some of them later told the news media that they had
been required to show up and weren't paid for the day."

Have you got a better one? (laughter)

That would be embarrassed laughter, or at least it should
have been, when Mitt Romney failed to address
the
direct question Laura Ingraham posed back in January. After
running around saying Obama made things worse, and then saying "I didn't
say he made it worse," Romney admitted that yes, the economy is getting
better after the Great Recession that Obama inherited from George
W. Bush, at a time when we weren't sure if it would be the second Great
Depression, or the Panic of 2008, or what.

INGRAHAM: Isn't it a hard argument to make if you're saying,
like, OK, he inherited this recession, he took a bunch of steps to try
to turn the economy around, and now, we're seeing more jobs, but vote
against him anyway? Isn't that a hard argument to make? Is that a stark
enough contrast?

ROMNEY: Have you got a better one, Laura? It just happens to be
the truth.

Um, what "happens to be the truth"? "Vote for me"? Back in
January, it wasn't clear that the presumptive nominee was going to make
good on his presumption. His GOP competition were firing for effect with
such bon mots as "Romney is not a conservative," "Romney is not
electable," "Romney would manage the decay [of Washington]," and
"Release your tax returns, Mitt."

That was before Gingrich's high point in South Carolina and his
subsequent decline to death throes when he observed that Republicans
cannot win with "an Etch A Sketch platform that shows no principle or
backbone," and Rick Santorum opined that we might as well re-elect
Barack Obama if Romney won the nomination.

Romney and his boy wonder are still looking for a better argument as to
why they should be elected, to the point of making stuff up. Props for
creativity, at least. The party of new ideas. Brand new.

Labor Day

Rounding error

Paul Ryan wants to know if I'm better off, but this seems like a trick
question. If the answer were "yes," why would I send him $25? And if the
answer were "no," where would I get $25 to throw away on his campaign?
Here's his assessment of the last year:

"The middle class has been crushed under his administration. Gas prices
have doubled, incomes have dropped, poverty is headed toward fifty-year
highs, and unemployment has been above 8 percent for 42 straight
months.

"And yet, he still wants you to believe you are better off now than you
were four years ago."

Actually Paul, I haven't been waiting for a president to make me better
off. I've taken responsibility for myself, as of... three or four
decades ago. Anyway, he goes on, but this...

"The present administration has made its choices. And Mitt Romney and I
have made ours: before the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we
are going to solve this nation's economic problems and get America back
on track. ..."

Before the math overwhelms us? What in the world is that about?
This is the guy who ran one marathon in his life, in just over 4 hours
and "rounded" that to
"two
hour and fifty-something." So yeah, I can see why he might be
worried about the math overwhelming him.

I'm not buying a platitudinous economic plan from this guy. Nor giving
him $25 to squander on emails like this.

Lies, damn lies, and made-up myths

In tennis, when you make a bad call to give yourself an advantage,
that's called a "hook." More creatively, you can accuse your opponent of
making a bad call. That's the "reverse hook." In publishing when you
have a book with "lies" and "exposing myths" in the title, but you
don't have your facts in a row... maybe
the
publisher gives your book the hook and takes it off the market.

The controversial book was written by Texas evangelical David Barton. ...
The publishing company says it's ceasing publication because it found
that "basic truths just were not there."

That makes it time for ... self-publishing! I'm sure there's a market
for rewriting myths to order.

Last month's NPR feature about
The
most influential evangelist you've never heard of gives the author
more air time than it seems he deserves to pitch his "historical
reclamation," a 30-year program to inculcate his version of history
in the minds of a new generation.

Social contract

Hedrick Smith has a good op-ed for the holiday:
When
Capitalists Cared. It starts with Henry Ford recognizing that
profitable mass production depends on mass consumption, which
depends on wages that enable the middle class. Smart business.
I grew up in the midst of both the Baby Boom and the sustained economic
growth following WW II into the 1970s that he describes.

"From 1948 to 1973, the productivity of all nonfarm workers nearly
doubled, as did average hourly compensation. But things changed
dramatically starting in the late 1970s. Although productivity increased
by 80.1% from 1973 to 2011, average wages rose only 4.2% and hourly
compensation (wages plus benefits) rose only 10% over that time,
according to government data analyzed by the Economic Policy
Institute."

It doesn't have to be this way. He gives examples. And he concludes:

"Today, we are all paying the price for this shift. As Ford recognized,
if average Americans do not have secure jobs with steady and rising pay,
the economy will be sluggish. Since the early 1990s, we have been mired
three times in 'jobless recoveries.' It's time for America's business
elites to step beyond political rhetoric about protecting wealthy "job
creators" and grasp Ford's insight: Give the middle class a better share
of the nation's economic gains, and the economy will grow faster. Our
history shows that."

2.Sept.2012

About presumption

Politicians like to express empathy for various plights people who might
vote for them experience, even if they might not have actually
experienced the same thing. Sympathy can be nice, but there's the risk
of slipping into pity, and that rarely feels good on the receiving end.
The problem with plan A is that feigned empathy is likely to be rejected
as well.

Not that she's a politician, but Ann Romney is working for one these
days, so all that applies to her, too. Cathy Walker-Gilman's
post on her ThinkBannedThoughts blog, the response to celebrity
patronizing from the cheap seats, has gone viral for the very reason
that it taps into the classic vein:
A
letter to Mrs. Romney.

"[P]lease refrain from claiming allegiance with me, from suggesting that
you are an example of 'every woman.' That claim is a lie.

"Have you ever bounced a check because you had to put gas in your
car?

"Have you ever been forced to calculate the cost of your groceries as
you shop to be sure you're not over-budget?

"Have you ever told one of your children that they can have new shoes
that fit ... after payday?"

1.Sept.2012

The sting

After
Matt
Taibbi reveals the secret of Mitt Romney's business success
("borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay
back") he describes the setup in exquisite detail, lacking only some
Scott Joplin vamp for a soundtrack:

"By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a
calculated bluff of historic dimensions—placing a massive all-in
bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has
been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up
companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those
same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who
needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them
with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an
image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running
mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and
self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the
candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip
your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for
president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think
he really is qualified for the White House."

That's longer than my typical excerpted quote, but as the guy on the
late night infomercial says, there's much, much more, and it's all in
Taibbi's inimitable style, ever so slightly over the top, and so maybe
too easily dismissed as just something in Rolling Stone. Wall
Street got away with the crime of the century after all, why shouldn't
Mitt get his main chance too?

There's really only one big pair of dots to connect, and let me pose a
question to offer a clue: who made out like bandits? It wasn't "the
American people," certainly, nor even that broad swath of those people
that form the fading middle class. It's like Gordon Gecko married Ayn
Rand, and they had five boys, bent on "creative destruction."
Figuratively speaking.

"A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over
America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we'll all end up
paying for the acquisition."